In International Shipping News 31/03/2015
We operate in a global industry and one of the proud boasts of the shipping industry is our capacity to work worldwide; freedom to cross-trade being seen as in everyone’s benefit. At the same time we have to recognise that these freedoms are not infrequently under attack, by protectionist sentiments or concerns about security in an uncertain world.
The ability to move expertise between locations is important to shipping companies and many other maritime industry operators, which need to shift people about the world for operational reasons. But increasingly, visa restrictions make this difficult and sometimes impossible. And while one can understand the need for a sensible and efficient control of the movement of people around the world, there often seems to be a depressing inflexibility in the official line on visa applications.
While a tight control might be justified on the movement of unskilled labour, when there are certain highly specialised skills and qualifications in short supply, whose holders really do need to move to where they are desperately required, a more flexible approach needs to be taken. It has particularly become a problem in the European Union, where, for instance, superintendents and other specialists from outside the region are required in the absence of adequate internal skills being available.
Once in a European country, shipping being what it is, these specialists will almost certainly need to move around the region, but find that this is both difficult and expensive, with visas being granted for just the one member state. A ship manager or technical superintendent, may be required to attend ships in half a dozen different states, but if a non-European, will find this is difficult, with individual states having their own very different rules.
Maritime employers may have staff sourced from across the world and for all sorts of operational reasons (not the least being to give staff a range of experience) need to move them around. These may be temporary postings, for a few weeks to a few years, but the needs of the maritime sector rarely seem to attract any special treatment, which they might consider perfectly reasonable.
Speaking last week at his inauguration as the President of the UK Chamber of Shipping Tom Boardley, Marine Director of Lloyd’s Register, made specific mention of the problems being faced by the industry in this matter of visas. In both the shipping industry and indeed in his “day job” in the classification society, they will be experiencing this problem on a regular basis.
It has been suggested that throughout the maritime industry, people looking for specialist technical skills – whether in ship operation or technical areas – are all fishing for a relatively small number of people in the same pool. Given reasonable flexibility in immigration departments, enabling these specialist skills to move around the world with some flexibility, the maritime industry can just about manage. If people cannot move reasonably freely, the whole sector really is in a mess.
